The famous passage where Twist asks for 'more’ food is so well known it is now something of a cliché, making it difficult to comprehend its original power. Researcher Claire Wood, from the University of York, decided that students would better appreciate this scene if they could taste the unpalatable workhouse gruel that Oliver requests.

South Asia’s transition from colonialism to independence and democracy in 1947 was one of the most momentous events of the mid-twentieth century. Sixty years on, and with India currently in the news as the UK seeks, in the Prime Ministers words, to establish a ‘special relationship’ with its former colony and now growing superpower, this Research Grant project takes up the compelling history of citizens’ experiences of independence over this period, and their everyday contacts with the new state.

An AHRC research grant of nearly £300,000 has enabled academics from the University of Hertfordshire, Sheffield and the Open University to double in size the trial proceedings now available to view on the website Old Bailey Online and provide access to the largest single source of searchable information about "ordinary" British lives and behaviour ever published.

This case study examines two linked AHRC research grant projects led by Professor James Roddis from the Art and Design Research Centre, Sheffield Hallam University. The first award was for £41,644 from 1999-2000, and the second was for £119,387 from 2002-2004.

Housing is a British national obsession. How are we going to accommodate the changing needs of the population, as higher divorce rates, more single-person headed households and an ageing community all impact on the need to adjust national housing stock?